Once Upon a Time in West Toronto

by Terri Favro

  “Probably true,” mutters Jasmine. “What should we do? Leave her here until we get back?”

  Ida shakes her head. “I don’t think we should leave her alone. And she doesn’t seem to have any friends in the neighbourhood. Maybe the church—I could try calling the priest.”

  Jasmine snorts. “Oh please. It’s that kind of patriarchal sexist medieval institution that got her into this situation in the first place.”

  Ida starts to explain about the kindness of Father Dave Como, but stops. Jasmine isn’t wrong. It was no doubt the priest back home in Angela’s village who arranged the marriage and performed the proxy wedding. An entirely different breed from the educated, enlightened Dave, but still. To quote from Marcello’s favourite movie about the glamorous mobsters, they’re all part of the same hypocrisy.

  “Maybe we should take her with us,” says Ida. “The march is for her rights, too, no?”

  Jasmine nods. “Right on, sister.”

  Ida explains to Angela that they are going for a walk with a group of Canadian women. This gets Angela out of the chair and into the back of Jasmine’s car with the protest signs and the bullhorn. As they set off, Jasmine glances in the rear view, then says to Ida: “I don’t mean to be ghoulish, dear, but your friend already looks like a ghost. Someone has to convince her to leave that brute.”

  Ida sighs. “We could try to call the police ourselves, perhaps. Make them talk to him.”

  Jasmine shakes her head. “Useless. Unless your friend makes the complaint, the authorities won’t do a damn thing.”

  In the parking lot on Adelaide Street, they meet the rest of the group. Jasmine hands out protest signs and gives brisk instructions, while Ida stands with an arm wrapped around Angela’s shoulders. Something about all the people and activity seems to have perked her up: “What are they doing, signora?”

  “They are going to march to demand their rights. Yours too. See the signs? They are telling the government to start treating women equally with men. Do you understand?”

  Angela nods. “It’s like a church procession.”

  Well, not really, thinks Ida but doesn’t try to explain further. She’ll find out soon enough what a demo is.

  They marshal with the other marchers—mostly labour unionists, a few ancient Communist organizers from the old days on Spadina, some gay rights activists, and anti-nuke campaigners. The women at the head of the group unfurl a banner that reads “WOMEN’S RIGHTS NOW.”

  Ida offers the “FREEDOM TO CHOOSE” sign to Angela: “You don’t have to carry it but you can if you want to.” To her surprise, Angela accepts it. Ida picks up “ABORTION RIGHTS NOW.”

  The march begins to move up Spadina. Sidewalks are crowded with onlookers, some of them applauding, others jeering, especially at the women.

  “Come on you bitches, take your shirts off, and burn your bras for us!” someone shouts from the sidelines. “Show us your tits!” yells another.

  Ida pats Angela’s arm reassuringly; they’re walking together, side by side, Angela holding up her sign like the others. At least Angela doesn’t understand what the men are shouting. Looking at Angela’s battered face makes Ida feel enraged again—not just at Angela’s husband, but at everything, at the unfairness of life, at these stupid louts who can hassle them so freely. Where are the famous Canadian decency and politeness now?

  On the bullhorn, Jasmine shouts: “WOMEN’S RIGHTS NOW! WOMEN’S RIGHTS NOW!” Her fist in the air, Ida shouts too until she feels something soft and wet hit her in the side of the face. She reaches up to touch it, then sniffs her fingers: it stinks. Someone is lobbing rotten tomatoes at the women marchers. Angela reaches out to dab Ida’s face with her shawl: “Signora, why…”

  And all hell breaks loose.

  For reasons Ida is never quite able to make sense of later, everyone starts running. Ida links arms with Angela, trying not to be separated from her, but the sea of people wrenches them apart and washes them away from one another. Caught in a whirlpool of bodies, Ida is trapped in one place while Angela is carried off by a different current, her head bobbing with the motion of the crowd, the FREEDOM sign abandoned on the ground. Forcing herself to pay attention to what is going on around her, Ida realizes that the crush of people is spiralling like water going down a drain or a toilet flushing. Ida has a brief moment of panic in the crush of bodies; she feels like she’s suffocating, can’t make sense of why they’re all moving closer together instead of forward, until she sees the police in helmets and vests surrounding them, carrying batons and shouting Move back! Move back! She’s too short to see much of anything else except people’s backs as they try to flee. But there’s nowhere else to move to. Ida remembers the instructions about passive resistance, but there’s no way she can get down on the ground, and if she did, she’d be trampled. She feels a hand on her elbow and a strong pressure pulling, pulling her out of the crowd. Someone is rescuing her—Marcello? she thinks, but when she turns her head she sees that it’s an older man, heavy, a tool belt slung under his the gut, a pair of wire cutters hanging from a loop. He grips her around the waist so hard that her feet drag along the ground as he pushes the panicked crowd aside. When Ida recognizes her rescuer, her bladder empties immediately.

  “Let go! Let go!” she shouts, struggling to break free of Stan’s grip. “I’m not that candy man’s wife anymore!”

  “You’re not a wife, you’re an unfinished business transaction. Just stay calm or I’ll take out the wire cutters. Wanna lose the end of your nose?”

  Ida looks around in desperation. Stan is moving quickly, pushing people aside, dragging her; in a moment, they will be free of the crowd. Not far away, the police are pushing women into black vans. Ida struggles, trying to kick Stan in the knee but he’s gripping her at arm’s length. “My Marcello will kill you!”

  “Yeah? Hasn’t he figured out what you really are yet?” asks Stan, turning toward her. Ida spits in his face.

  With his free hand, Stan grips Ida’s neck, crushing her windpipe. Her feet leave the ground. She can’t breathe, but in the wildness of the crowd, no one notices that she’s about to die. She still has the “ABORTION RIGHTS NOW” sign in her hand. Lifting it in the air, she brings it down on the back of Stan’s head, the wooden stick of the placard giving a resounding thwack. A red bloom appears on his scalp.

  “You goddamn bitch!” He swings at her face, the slap sending her to the ground, into a storm of running-shoed feet; Ida curls into a ball, trying not to be trampled. Struggling to get up, she sees Stan trying to push his way back into the crowd, toward her. But now there’s something on his back. At first Ida thinks it’s an animal—a dog perhaps—until she sees that the figure is clothed in a granny dress and construction boots, and is hitting Stan over the head with the FREEDOM sign: a tall woman with long black hair, roused to a fury. He flails his hands, trying to pull the Fury off his back; finally he wrenches her away and lifts one large fist to punch her but before he can connect, Ida sees a clear path and rolls across the ground, hitting him just below the knees, knocking him off his feet. Flat on her back, Ida looks up between the legs of a cop; he’s standing directly over her, probably not even aware that she’s there. Move back! he shouts, thwacking his club on a shield, and Ida suddenly sees the quickest means of rescue: seizing her sign, she jabs hard at the exposed part of the policeman, right between his legs. He topples like a sack of potatoes thrown from the back of a truck. Ida finds herself lying directly beside the groaning man, his baton rolling on the ground. Ida grabs it; if Stan comes for her again, she’s now properly armed. A few feet away, another cop is peeling the Fury off Stan’s back; she must have jumped him again when she had the chance. When Stan is finally free of her, Ida watches him disappear into the crowd.

  Ida is lifted by her arms and dragged forward, the baton wrenched from her hand. Looking around, she is relieved to see Angela So-and-So, Jasmine, and the Fury being haule
d away too.

  It takes Ida’s eyes a minute to adjust to the darkness. She and Angela have been pushed into some type of truck, black on the outside, black on the inside, packed with women. The two of them huddle together in the dim interior, the only light entering through a tiny window in the back door. “Where are we, signora?” asks Angela breathlessly.

  “Non lo so. I don’t know,” answers Ida. Looking around at the other women, she asks, “Where are we?”

  “Inside a Black Maria. A Paddywagon,” says a woman’s voice. “The pigs are taking us to jail.”

  “Jail? What did we do wrong?” Ida is shocked; Jasmine had assured her that the protest was entirely legal.

  The woman barks a laugh. “We didn’t do nothing wrong. The male chauvinists are trying to teach us a lesson. Put us in our place.”

  Ida suddenly becomes conscious of the smell of her own body, covered with rotten tomato, urine, and sweat. Her thigh is pressed against the woman next to her. Now that her eyes have adjusted to the light, Ida can see that she’s a teenage girl improbably dressed in breeches, boots, and a dark riding jacket.

  “Excuse me, but aren’t you Ida Umbriaco?” asks the girl.

  Ida peers at her. Although the rotten tomato on her jacket gives her common ground with everyone else in the wagon, her clothes make her look like royalty. “Yes, I’m Ida. Who are you, Princess Anne?”

  The girl laughs. “I’m Cindy Carlyle.” She waits a moment, waiting for Ida to recognize the name. When she doesn’t, the girl adds: “Jonathan Carlyle’s daughter.”

  Mr. Cake! thinks Ida. How much worse can her luck get? “But why did they arrest you?”

  “I came down for the demo. Daddy thinks I’m at Sunnybrook Stables for my riding lesson.” Ida hears her sigh deeply. “So much bourgeois crap.”

  “I always wanted to ride horses,” says Ida, despite the ridiculousness of bringing this up now. “It is one of my dreams.”

  The girl perks up. “Really? I’d love to take you. It would completely freak out my father.”

  The processing at Don Jail is tedious. Ida sits on a bench between Cindy and Angela, her clothes still damp with pee and tomato pulp, needing to empty her bladder again. On the other side of the room, the Fury sits beside Jasmine, hands behind her head, her construction-booted feet stretched out in front of her. She’s a pretty woman, but a remarkably large and powerful one.

  “Thank you for your help, Miss,” says Ida to the Fury. “I’m Ida. May I know your name?”

  The woman acknowledges Ida’s thanks with a nod, as if saying, It was nothing. “Holly,” the Fury says huskily, then falls into silence.

  “We’ll be out of here soon,” says Cindy. “They’re just trying to scare us for being uppity. It’s not like they can charge us with anything.”

  Each woman’s information is typed onto a form by a policeman who scarcely bothers to look at them. Ida asks for and receives permission to make a phone call. She calls Georgia at Ed’s house, who gets on the line and tells Ida to stay put until he gets in touch with Marcello.

  Stay put? What else am I going to do? wonders Ida.

  Ida, Jasmine, Angela, Cindy, and Holly sit side by side in the holding cell, Angela’s head in Ida’s lap, Cindy peeling nail polish off her thumb, Jasmine softly humming “We Shall Overcome,” Holly sitting with her legs spread under her dress, elbows to knees, when Ed arrives wearing a suit jacket and blue jeans. He stands outside of the cell, arms crossed, looking in at the five of them. “Well, this makes a pretty picture.”

  Ida looks at him through the bars, then down at Angela, who has fallen asleep in her lap. “If there were justice in this country, the police would arrest this one’s brute of a husband, not us.”

  Ed’s eyebrows shoot up. “What the hell is Angela Lo Presti doing here?”

  “She came to our house looking for sanctuary,” says Ida, stroking Angela’s hair. “I didn’t want to leave her so I brought her along on the march.”

  Ed sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “When Tony finds out, things are going to be even worse for her. You know that, don’t you?”

  Ida feels a spike of anger at Ed so intense that she can barely speak. “Oh yes? You know about Tony and everybody knows about Tony, about how he beats his wife? And you do nothing and tell me this makes things worse?”

  The other women in the cell glare at Ed and nod.

  “Give it to him sister,” mutters Cindy.

  Ed drops his eyes. Clears his throat. Adjusts his tie. “I’ll see if I can find out when they’re planning to release her. Maybe I can get Dave Como involved. To act as a go-between between her and Tony.”

  “What?” says Ida. “ You’re going to send her back to him?”

  “Where else is she going to go?”

  Ida lifts her chin. “I’ll take her home with me.”

  Ed clears his throat again. “You’re not going home, Ida. At least not right away. They’re charging you with assaulting a police officer.”

  “Oh baby,” says Cindy, putting her arm around Ida’s shoulders. “You’ve gotta stop hitting The Man.”

  “I thought the fascisti lost the war, Eduardo,” says Ida acidly.

  “Don’t worry about it, Ida,” says Cindy. “My father’s going to pull some strings and get the charges dropped for all of us. With you and me both in here, he’s worried about more bad publicity.”

  Ed looks at her skeptically. “And who would you be?”

  Cindy stretches out her long, riding-booted legs and puts her arms behind her head, leaning back against the wall of the cell. “I’m The Man’s daughter.”

  True to Cindy’s word, strings are pulled and cell doors are opened. Everyone is released without charges.

  Dave Como, waiting at the entrance to the jail, says he’s come to take Angela to a women’s shelter run by Italian-speaking volunteers. “Mrs. Lo Presti won’t be the first woman in the parish I’ve had to take there, unfortunately. It’ll give her a safe place away from Tony, for now.”

  From the steps at the front of the jail, Ida scans the crowd of women for her rescuer, Holly, but the black-haired Fury has vanished.

  With her car still parked in the lot on Spadina, Jasmine hails a cab for Cindy, Ida, and herself. Ida asks to be dropped off, not at home, but at Spadina and Bloor.

  “I want to walk a bit, breathe the air,” says Ida. “It feels good to be free again.”

  Exhausted yet exhilarated, Ida strolls along Bloor, past Hungarian restaurants and porno movie houses and second-hand bookshops. As she nears the circus lights of Honest Ed’s department store, someone falls into step beside her, slipping an arm through hers—the black-haired Fury.

  “Holly! I’m glad we meet again. I didn’t have a chance to say enough my thanks,” says Ida. Arm in arm, Holly’s unusual height is more noticeable. It’s not unlike walking with Marcello.

  “I’ve gotta talk to you, Ida,” Holly says.

  There’s something odd about her voice. It’s too deep. Her face has changed, too, the bristles of a five o’clock beard beginning to poke through the surface of her makeup. That’s when Ida realizes that Holly is a young man. Ida tries not to show her surprise. She is a woman of the world, after all.

  Holly nods in the direction of a stone church on Bathurst Street, its bell tower tolling the hour. Six o’clock. “Let’s go into St. Peter’s.”

  Ida laughs, and shakes her head. “I’m not one for church.”

  “Me neither, but it’s a good place to talk without anyone hearing us.”

  Ida pointedly checks her watch. She’s grateful to this woman—person—but far too tired for a conversation. “I have to get dinner on. Perhaps another day.”

  Holly shakes her head firmly. Almost angrily. “No. Now.”

  Ida tries to gently extricate her arm. “I must go home. My husband will be wondering where I am
.”

  Holly gives a deep, bitter laugh. “By now, Marcello’s probably either dead or in jail.”

  Ida stops walking. “How do you know his name?”

  For one horrible moment, Ida thinks that Holly is another of Senior’s thugs. She tries to yank her arm away but Holly is holding her in a firm grip. She’s about to start screaming when Holly drops her voice into an even lower register and whispers urgently into Ida’s ear: “Ida, it’s me! Bum Bum. Pasquale. Benny. Whatever you call me, I’m on your side. But you have to come with me now.”

  In the pews of St. Peters, a scattering of penitents bow their heads. A cross is lit over the door of the confession box, indicating that someone is pouring sins into a priest’s ear. Ida hasn’t been to a church service since her proxy wedding in Italy, where she exchanged vows with a hired groom, stinking of wine and mothballs. He turned out to be the real groom’s brother. As part of a package deal, the marriage broker had loaned him a suit, and threw in a priest, a bouquet, and a dingy wedding dress two sizes too big for Ida; she had to be pinned into it. The proxy wedding meant she was legally married to a man in Canada she had never met: Senior. A horrible day.

  Benny and Ida slide into a pew screened from the rest of the church by a rack of devotional candles.

  “Why do you say Marcello is dead or in jail?” she whispers.

  “He’s gone on a vendetta to get Senior to sign the annulment. Either his name goes on the paper, or his brains,” Benny whispers, as he pulls off his wig and wipes a sleeve across his face. “Man, this thing gets hot.”

  With his wig in his lap, Benny talks. Ida listens. When she learns why and how he escaped from the Andolini farm, Ida puts her arm around him and leans her head on his shoulder in sympathy. When she hears of Claire’s death, she starts to wipe tears. When they get to Benny’s liberation of Noname from Doctors’ Hospital, Ida rises abruptly. “Enough. We go now.”

  At Benny’s knock, Vera opens the door. “Benny, thank Christ. Your friend’s been here for two hours, tying up the goddamn phone. Trying to call his wife. Marco’s got business to do, he can’t have customers getting nothin’ but busy signals.” Vera glances at Ida. “Who’s this?”